Yttrium is one of four, yes four, elements named after the same small village in Sweden: Ytterbium, Terbium, Yttrium, and Erbium. We're lucky they ran out of elements to discover or we would have ended up with Rbium or something.

It's a nice enough metal, but not distinguished in any particular way from others around it that are cheaper, stronger, and more stable in air. I don't think there would be any reason to make a missile part out of yttrium, even if you didn't care about the cost (and we all know the people who make missile parts don't care about the cost).

Yttrium is used as a component in high temperature superconductors (where by "high temperature" one means very low temperatures but higher than the really, really low temperatures that used to be required for superconductivity).

Reader James Grant supplied the following information:

Yttrium is used as the major alloying element in the magnesium alloy WE43 (4% Yttrium, 3% rare earths). Alloy costs are very high, but it produces a castable alloy that has good hot strength properties and good corrosion resistance (for magnesium that is). Typical customers are aerospace defense manufacturers.

So now I know there is at least one structural application, and it is a missile part after all (though only in alloy form, unlike say beryllium which is used in relatively pure form for missile parts).

Healers Fluorite with Rare Earth Element Yttrium.
I admit, I have absolutely no idea if this stone actually has any yttrium in it: See below for a sample that is actual pure yttrium. Honestly, just between you and me, I really just bought this one for the description the seller gave it on eBay: That alone is worth twice the price I paid! And here it is, verbatim from the auction:

This Beautiful Little Stone Being is a Light Lavender/Peach, looking Peach as the Light Shines through her. Lavender in the Shadow!

Fluorite Stimulates Third Eye Awakening and Understanding! It helps us to See Past the Veils of Illusion to the Beauty and Truth of Awareness. Fluorite Provides Integration of Dark and Light Clearing Us of Heavy Out Dated Energy.

This Combination Stone Being offers Tremendous Healing Energy to her Keeper. She Amplifies our Aura and Helps us Channel Higher Frequency Energy. She helps us Reach the Deep Peace Within enabling us Access to the Higher Knowledge which is Our True Birth Right.

Very Valuable for Teachers and Healers.

Upon first holding these Stone Beings I was amazed at the Hot Flow of Energy they Generate. A Pure Loving Embrace.

The Wonderful Folks who supply these, and myself, feel these Stone Beings need to Get Out in the World. Therefore, starting bid on these will be my cost. Blessings!

From Mexico or Nevada.

Size is 1 7/8" x 3/4" x 1 1/8"

We are Divine Intelligence. Love. It is All There Is. Think of Yourself as a Tiny Cell of Divine Light and Wisdom. ALL BEINGS are Part of The Great Whole. We Carry the Same Cellular Light Memories as The Stone People. WE have Simply (SIMPLY!?!) Forgotten how to Remember! The Stone People are not Complicated with Human Perception. They Simply Are. The Stone People Bring these Memories to Consciousness as We are Ready to Receive them. We Are the Hands of Spirit, the Stone People are Waiting for Us.

They are Here to Help Us do the Work of Spirit.

We Love the Stone People. They are as Individual as you and I. Yet, we are all One. I am finding, as a I look/feel each One, such a Great Love and Open Heart. Each Being, overwhelms me with Its Unique Beauty and Wisdom. I wish you could feel them at that moment as I do. I do not mean that in a Sense that you can't. What I mean is: You know how you feel when your Heart is Wide Open and you want to Share that Energy of Beauty and Joy Everywhere? We Can, you know! According to Theory it Takes 20% of the Human Population to Make the Shift!

Anyway... It is difficult to share what each Being Says. It is only what I hear from the Stone Being and What you Hear may be quite Different. I don't want to quote endless pages from books. I use as a resource and recommend Melody's "Love is in the Earth" for further learning. Really, what I recommend is Feeling their Unique Wisdom, Beauty and Endless Gifts! The Intricacies of Each Being is Quite Amazingly Overwhelming!

They come to Us for a Reason.

To Our Light Within. May Its Brilliance Shine!
Wow.

For what it's worth, analysis by x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy at the Center for Microanalysis of Materials, University of Illinois (partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant DEFG02-91-ER45439) indicates no measurable quantity of yttrium. A tiny bit of strontium, yes, but no yttrium.

Good-sized Lump.
This irregular, obviously mechanically formed lump, is from the irrepressible David Franco, supplier of only the highest purity elements, financed by the ever-generous Ed Pegg. It has conveniently rescued me from a very questionable representation of yttrium.Source:David FrancoContributor:Ed Pegg JrAcquired:16 August, 2002Price: $21Size: 0.5"Purity: 99.99%

Sample from the RGB Set.
The Red Green and Blue company in England sells a very nice element collection in several versions. Max Whitby, the director of the company, very kindly donated a complete set to the periodic table table.

Sample from the Everest Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (except gases) weigh about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.

Large cubical lump.
Dave Hamric sells elements on his website and on eBay. He donated this beautiful chunk of yttrium as a sample to show the sorts of things he can supply: If you need some rare earths, contact him or check out his eBay auctions.

This looks like distilled metal, probably of high purity, probably from China: He asked me to have it analyzed so soon I'll have a specific purity determination.

Hollow cathode lamp.
Lamps like this are available for a very wide range of elements: Click the Sample Group link below to get a list of all the elements I have lamps like this for. They are used as light sources for atomic absorption spectrometers, which detect the presence of elements by seeing whether a sample absorbs the very specific wavelengths of light associated with the electronic transitions of the given element. The lamp uses an electric arc to stimulate the element it contains to emit its characteristic wavelengths of light: The same electronic transitions are responsible for emission and absorption, so the wavelengths are the same.
In theory, each different lamp should produce a different color of light characteristic of its element. Unfortunately, the lamps all use neon as a carrier gas: You generally have to have such a carrier gas present to maintain the electric arc. Neon emits a number of very strong orange-red lines that overwhelm the color of the specific element. In a spectrometer this is no problem because you just use a prism or diffraction grating to separate the light into a spectrum, then block out the neon lines. But it does mean that they all look pretty much the same color to the naked eye.
I've listed the price of all the lamps as $20, but that's really just a rough average: I paid varying amounts at various eBay auctions for these lamps, which list for a lot more from an instrument supplier.
(Truth in photography: These lamps all look alike. I have just duplicated a photo of one of them to use for all of them, because they really do look exactly the same regardless of what element is inside. The ones listed are all ones I actually have in the collection.)Source:eBay seller heruurContributor:Theodore GrayAcquired:24 December, 2003Price: $20Size: 8"Purity: 99.9%Sample Group:Atomic Emission Lamps

Advertising set.
This lovely little set of rare earth oxides was made to promote the fact that rare earths really aren't very rare. Once the technology was developed to separate and purify then economically, they became quite common in fact. There is no date on this piece which is a pity, but I would guess it was made in the 1960's.Source:SoCal (Nevada), IncContributor:Theodore GrayAcquired:23 July, 2004Price: $20Size: 8"Purity: >20%

Torn lump.American Elements is a chemical supplier with a wonderfully refreshing attitude towards element collectors: They actually like small orders from people looking for exotic elements (with reason). They also sell quite a variety of compounds, particularly rare earth salts, many of which are highly colored.
This lump of yttrium is typical of the metal, showing what appears to be a torn polycrystalline surface. My guess is they chop up slabs of the stuff with big sheers. In any case, it makes for a lovely, very photogenic texture: Check out the 3D rotation video.Source:American ElementsContributor:American ElementsAcquired:2 June, 2006Text Updated:11 August, 2007Price: DonatedSize: 1"Purity: 99%

Element coin.
Dave Hamric sells element samples under the name Metallium. He's developed a line of coins struck out of various common and uncommon metals: They are quite lovely, and very reasonably priced, considering the difficulty of creating some of them.
Here is the back side of this coin (click either picture to see it larger):
Click the Sample Group link below to see many other coins made of various elements, or click the link to his website above if you want to buy one like this.Source:Dave HamricContributor:Theodore GrayAcquired:1 December, 2006Text Updated:14 January, 2007Price: $22Size: 0.75"Purity: >99%Sample Group:Coins

Bulk commercial yttrium.
Description supplied by the source:
This is the form in which rare earth raw material is often distributed for bulk users--after being distilled into the dendritic form, it is then melted down by computer-controlled non-consumable electrode arc melters in vacuum/argon to main the purity (3N5). The characteristic bottom surface results from being melted only once, thoroughly, without much care towards appearance. For a given lot of rare earth (ingots like these are sold by the bucket or drum), one will be robotically selected at random and have a sample core drilled out of the top in order to provide a certified lot purity- this sample was chosen to display that particular phenomena. Also, it was a lot of fun to dig through a 30-pound pail of yttrium hemispheres.Source:Ethan CurrensContributor:Ethan CurrensAcquired:30 April, 2008Text Updated:29 January, 2009Price: AnonymousSize: 1"Purity: 99.95%

Leftover melted finger.
Description supplied by the source:
This is another sample of yttrium, except this one was melted from bulk hemispheres also shown on this site. This material was melted into a long finger-shaped mold in order for it to be machined (very carefully!) into a rod. The mold was much longer than this, but this piece did not end up being used, for whatever reason.Source:Ethan CurrensContributor:Ethan CurrensAcquired:30 April, 2008Text Updated:30 April, 2008Price: AnonymousSize: 1"Purity: 99.9%

YAG boule top.
YAG stands for yttrium-aluminum-garnet: It's used to make lasers and can be doped with various elements to create different colors. This green one, for example, is doped with chromium.
The conical shape is similar to that of my silicon boule top, presumably because they are made by similar crystal-growing procedures. A crystal begins growing from a seed, expands out until it reaches the diameter of the melting pot is being pulled from, and then continues to grow as a straight-sided cylinder as it is pulled slowly out. Only the full-diameter portion of the rod can be used, so the cone at the start becomes waste and ends up with someone like me. (Actually, even this waste is quite valuable, probably because it can be melted down and reused. But Max found a nice company willing to sell us the cutoffs for a reasonable price.)Source:Max Whitby of RGBContributor:Max Whitby of RGBAcquired:10 October, 2003Price: DonatedSize: 2"Composition: (Cr,Y)Al2O3

Aeschynite.
The card that came with this shale-like blackish mineral says the following about the name: "From Gk. aeschyne, shame, alluding to the inability of chemists at the time of its discovery to separate some of its constituents". Hm, I wonder if it was the chemists who came up with this name, or the geologists who gave it to them to analyze.
This specimen is from Molland in Iveland, Norway. I bought it for its thorium content: Not that many minerals contain thorium and I'm trying to collect them all.

Reader Magnus Alvestad sent this interesting information about Iveland:

Hi. I noticed that your Aeschynite sample is from Iveland in Norway. The small community of Iveland is actually famous for their mines and minerals. Here's a folder with some information about a local exhibition. They also have at least 5 mines that are open to the public for a small price, where you can dig for minerals yourself.

Confiscated Davidite.
This mildly radioactive Davidite ore was confiscated from a student who brought it to school, not realizing that schools tend to freak out about radioactive things, whether they are truly dangerous or not. The original source is United Nuclear and it's perfectly legal.Source:AnonymousContributor:AnonymousAcquired:8 May, 2007Text Updated:9 May, 2007Price: DonatedSize: 1"Composition: (La,Ce,Ca)(Y,U)(Ti,Fe)20O38

More confiscated Davidite.
This mildly radioactive Davidite ore was confiscated from a student who brought it to school, not realizing that schools tend to freak out about radioactive things, whether they are truly dangerous or not. The original source is United Nuclear and it's perfectly legal.Source:AnonymousContributor:AnonymousAcquired:8 May, 2007Text Updated:9 May, 2007Price: DonatedSize: 1"Composition: (La,Ce,Ca)(Y,U)(Ti,Fe)20O38

Superconducting powder.
This is a small vial of superconducting yttrium-barium-copper-oxide powder. Normally this type of material is seen pressed into pellets that can be used to levitate magnets or perform other superconducting experiments. Background information from the source:

Yttrium barium copper oxide was discovered in the late 1980's as being the first known substance to exhibit superconductivity above 77 Kelvin (-321\272F, -195C) outside of a mind-meltingly strong magnetic field. In the grand scheme of things, 77 Kelvin is a completely random value--it has no greater cosmic meaning, it's not an ultimate limit that contradicts some obscure physics theory, nothing like that. Rather, 77 Kelvin is the boiling point of nitrogen. The significance is simply that with the discovery of this material, superconductivity was a phenomenon that suddenly emerged from the realm of "laboratory curiosity" into the wide bright world of "industrially and economically feasible," using liquid nitrogen as a coolant. Previously, liquid hydrogen or liquid helium were necessary to access the temperatures at which superconductivity could be observed (outside of that frog-levitatingly strong magnetic field), both of which are at least an order of magnitude more expensive than liquid nitrogen.

The next breakthrough of the same significance would be the discovery of superconductivity at 194 Kelvin, the temperature of dry ice, which at the time of this writing, is not too far from realization (the current recordholder is 138 Kelvin, using a precise composition of Mercury Thallium Barium Calcium Copper Oxide...nice and toxic too). As a result, it is one of the most popular fields in materials and physics research today, which leads to samples such as this one.

However, the superconductive properties of YBCO depend intimately on the exact composition, which is never stoichiometric (integer values for the elemental subscripts). At the most basic level, special methods of synthesizing and altering this compound are used to add and subtract oxygens, which changes the valence state of copper so that different valence states are scattered through the material. Interestingly, the actual cause and mechanism of superconductivity is extremely complicated, and not known precisely. But researchers in a laboratory would likely take this sample, and use it in either a oxidizing or deoxidizing process to create exactly the composition they desired for whatever phenomena they were investigating.
Gentlemen, start your measurements!

Insane mineral capsules.
These minerals capsules are called "Immune Boost 77", from Morningstar Minerals. They are either being incredibly honest, or they really don't understand what they're saying when they list what amounts to nearly the entire periodic table on the label, as the "trace minerals" they contain.

Some of them are just silly, like thulium, which has absolutely no biological function. Others are a bit scarier, like thallium and thorium that are deadly poisons, and tellurium, which makes you smell of rotten onions for weeks.

Basically what they've done is list everything that occurs in even trace amounts in mixed monazite sand, which is kind of what the stuff inside looks like. The only reason they aren't seriously harmful (I assume) is that most of these are not actually present in any meaningful quantity.

My attention is drawn to these and other similar mineral supplements every time I decide to see if anything interesting has popped up on eBay for one or another of the obscure rare earths. Generally speaking if you search eBay for those guys you get very little of interest unless you turn on the option to search the text of the item description as well as the titles. Then you get lots of trace mineral supplements that one can only hope don't actually contain them.

Himalayan sea salt.
There is a list of 84 elements that seems to pop up repeatedly in the ingredient lists of "natural" mineral products, supplements, pills, and the like. Even, it turns out, in salt. Here then is the list of minerals claimed to be found in all-natural organic Himalayan sea salt:

I wish someone would tell these people that, for example, neptunium and plutonium do not occur in nature at all, let alone in salt. Unless, I suppose, if you count nuclear fallout as a "natural" source of ingredients.
What bothers me most is what this says about the level of scientific literacy, both of the people selling the stuff, and the people buying it. Does no one actually read the list? Or do they read it an not realize how preposterous it is? It's enough to make you despair for the future of mankind.
Pretty salt, though.Source:eBay seller saltwondersContributor:Theodore GrayAcquired:28 March, 2009Text Updated:4 April, 2009Price: $15Size: 0.25"Composition:NaClSbCsDyErEuGdHfHoInLaLuNdPrSmScThTlTeTbTmYbY